


Preliminary Base

by Tsorin



Category: Tales of Zestiria
Genre: CUTE ORIGAMI FLOWERS, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-04
Updated: 2017-02-04
Packaged: 2018-09-21 21:48:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 617
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9568238
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tsorin/pseuds/Tsorin
Summary: When Lailah finds Zaveid trying to learn how to make flowers, she can't help but step in.Origami, for her, helps her organize her thoughts. About herself, and about a certain wind seraph.





	

When Lailah came back from the stream, it was to Zaveid fidgeting with the flower she had given him at that inn ages ago. Quietly, she peeked over his shoulder. The flower was a total mess.

“I can make another one for you, you know,” she said.

Zaveid yelped and Lailah couldn’t help but giggle. Really, as much as Zaveid liked to posture, he was really more of a lamb than a wolf.

“Don’t go sneaking up on a guy like that!” Zaveid said. “He might get the wrong idea.”

Lailah hmmed as she took the bedraggled flower from him. Not only was it rumpled and bent, it had clearly been taken apart and then put back together incorrectly.

“What were you doing to the poor thing?” she asked.

“I was trying to figure out how you did it,” Zaveid said, leaning back on his hands. “It really is something, taking a piece of paper and making plants and things out of it.”

“It really isn’t that hard. It just takes some practice.” Lailah hesitated a moment before asking, “Would you like to learn?”

“Hell yeah!” Zaveid said, getting up and following her over to a stump the group had been using as a table.

“Hm. Better start with something simple. How about another flower?”

Lailah laughed at the horror on Zaveid’s face as he glancd at the more complicated flower she had given him earlier.

“Oh, not that one! Something a bit easier. We’ll start with a one sheet flower for now.”

Lailah walked him through it, step by step, fold by fold. He did it correctly, she knew he did because she had watched him, but still somehow the flower came out more like a rock.

“No, fold forward, then fold half back,” she instructed.

“Like this?”

“Not quite. Here.” And without thinking about it, she took his hands in hers.

Zaveid’s hands were so much larger than hers, his fingers thick and long where hers were thin and short. She could feel scars under her fingers, probably from when he had been in battle, or perhaps even before that when he had learned to use his pendulums for the first time.

 _How long ago had that been?_ Lailah wondered. _Five hundred years ago? Ten hundred? More than a thousand?_

Zaveid was old, even for a seraph, just like Lailah was. Lailah honestly did not remember coming into being. Had she sprung from an earthpoint like Edna? Had she been human once, like Mikleo?

Had Zaveid been human once? Had he, like Lailah, been forced to watch as precious friend after precious friend died, disappeared, or was corrupted?

Thinking about the Wyvern and about Eizen, he probably had.

It would be nice, wouldn’t it? To have someone who stayed?

“Lailah?”

Zaveid’s voice, deep and serious, shook her from her thoughts.

“It’s nothing,” she said. “Want to try again?”

“Nah,” Zaveid said, shaking his head. “Let’s face it. I’m all thumbs.”

Lailah took a few sky blue sheets of paper, folding them quickly and deftly into a series of small flowers.

“I don’t suppose you have any thread?” she asked Zaveid.

“Don’t you know who you’re talking to?” he said with a smirk. “Be right back.”

Lailah strung the origami flowers along the string, one after another until she had a chain.

“Here,” she said, slipping the forget-me-nots over Zaveid’s head. “To replace the old one.”

“I’ll take better care of these,” he said. He ran his hands over them, carefully and gently. “Promise.”

“See that you do!”

 

The next morning, Zaveid carefully packed the flower chain into his bag and Lailah found herself wishing that she had had the courage to make the red roses.


End file.
